1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a pseudo base station apparatus, which transmits and receives a variety of communication information to and from a terminal to be tested such as a mobile terminal (e.g., cellular phone) according to a scenario based on the test content and displays log data based on the transmission and reception as trace information in order to test whether the terminal to be tested normally operates, and more particularly, to a pseudo base station apparatus, which can certainly acquire log data at a user's desired timing during transmission and reception of a variety of communication information to and from a terminal to be tested.
2. Discussion of Related Art
In the case where a mobile terminal such as a cellular phone is newly developed, it is necessary to test whether the newly development mobile terminal normally operates in an environment where the mobile terminal is actually used. However, it is extremely difficult to test whether the newly developed mobile terminal normally operates by transmitting and receiving a variety of test communication information.
Therefore, as disclosed in Japanese Patent Publication Nos. 2006-174173 and 2008-277914, for example, a pseudo base station apparatus performs a test to determine whether a newly developed mobile terminal normally operates by connecting the newly developed mobile terminal to the pseudo base station apparatus having the same function as an actual base station and transmitting and receiving a variety of communication information between the mobile terminal and the pseudo base station apparatus.
In more detail, the pseudo base station apparatus is wired or wirelessly connected to the mobile terminal to transmit a variety of test signals to the mobile terminal (in a downlink direction). The mobile terminal performs a predetermined process according to a scenario written in advance based on the test content on a test signal transmitted from the pseudo base station apparatus. And, the pseudo base station apparatus determines whether a response signal transmitted from the mobile terminal with respect to the test signal (in an uplink direction) is a normal signal.
FIG. 5 shows a schematic configuration of a conventional pseudo base station apparatus. As shown in FIG. 5, the pseudo base station apparatus 51 broadly comprises a control terminal 52, which includes an external terminal device, and a pseudo base station 54, which performs a data communication with a mobile terminal 53 as a terminal to be tested in response to a command from the control terminal 52. The pseudo base station 54 includes a controller 55, a layer processor 56 at each layer, and a log processor 57. The log processor 57 includes a buffer 58 and a filter 59. In the pseudo base station apparatus 51, when a command according to a scenario written in advance based on the test content is output from the control terminal 52 to the pseudo base station 54, a predetermined data communication between the pseudo base station 54 and the mobile terminal 53 is performed under the control of the controller 55 such that U-Plane/C-Plane data (log data) from the layer processor 56 of layers (PHY/RLC/MAC/TE DSP) according to the data communication is input to the log process (LOG DSP) 57 and then transmitted to the control terminal 52. Therefore, log data as shown in FIG. 6, for example, is displayed on a display 52a of the control terminal 52 such that a user can identify a series of operations of the mobile terminal 53 from the log data displayed on the display 52 of the control terminal 52.
However, in the conventional pseudo base station apparatus 51 as shown in FIG. 5, the data rate of point A is often higher than that of point B. In detail, while the data rate of point A is about 160 Mbps, the data rate of point B is about 10 Mbps. That is, the data rate of point A is more than 10 times that of point B. For this reason, it is impossible to transmit the log data to the control terminal 52 in real time, and thus the log data is omitted. As a result, it is difficult for the user to acquire the log data at a desired timing.
Moreover, due to the omission of the log data, the user cannot identify the operation of the mobile terminal 53 by directly analyzing the log data, and thus the development efficiency of the mobile terminal 53 is significantly reduced.